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Alex
Raymond's Death By Arlen Schumer
As he sped down the steeply graded Clapboard, he failed to see a stop sign that was hidden by overgrown weeds. Racing through the intersection, Raymond and Drake were suddenly in a free fall: Clapboard dropped off precipitously after the stop sign, and the velocity of the car launched it into midair. "By not stopping, we shot out about sixty feet into the air," Drake said. "They calculated where the wheels hit the road, and it was about sixty feet. The last thing I remember, we were coming right at these trees. There was a pencil on the dashboard, and it was floating in the air. That's the last thing I remember before we hit." When Drake regained consciousness, he was lying in a grassy field, pelted with the continuing rain. He had not been wearing a seatbelt and had been thrown 35 feet from the car; he is still uncertain from which part of the car he was thrown (his best guess is the door). "I was just in shock," he said. "I thought to myself, 'What the hell am I doing, lying down in a field in the rain? I don't do this, this is crazy!' When he awoke, he was lying in a hospital bed, a doctor standing beside him, cursing: "That goddamn son of a bitch!" Drake asked him what the matter was. The doctor told Drake that this was the fourth time in the past month Raymond had been hospitalized due to injuries sustained in auto accidents. "He had been trying to kill himself," Drake said. Drake's injuries were grave: he suffered various internal injuries and a broken shoulder. Both his ears had been ripped off his head and had to be reattached. His rehabilitation was protracted, and during this period he had to stop cartooning. Also, a congenital condition had worsened Drake's prognosis: unlike almost all children, the bones on the top of Drake's skull had never met and locked together, and he was left with an unusual calcium ridge on the top of his head. As a result, when his injuries were examined and photographed at Norwalk Hospital, a hospital staffer concluded the worst: "He took pictures of my head and said, 'This man's skull is cracked from front to rear - he'll never make the night.' They thought I was going to die." During Drake's first few days in the hospital, doctors and nurses told him that Raymond lay in a coma. Eventually, he learned the truth: Raymond had been killed instantly upon impact. The Corvette's wraparound windshield had shattered, one large shard of it entering Raymond's mouth and exiting the rear of his head. Drake knew Raymond only as a colleague, not as a friend. They fraternized over work, and neither man discussed his personal life. So Drake could not have known of Raymond's troubled marriage (at the time, he was living apart from his wife); of his wife's refusal to grant him a divorce so he could marry his mistress (the Raymonds were Catholic); or of the insurance policy that would grant Raymond's wife $500,000 (and with the policy's double-indemnity clause, potentially $1 million). Drake knew of these only later. While Drake was in the hospital, Raymond's widow angrily refused even to visit Drake, having concluded erroneously that Drake had been supportive of Raymond's extramarital affair and his wishes to divorce his wife, "But I wasn't on anybody's side!" he said. "I didn't even know about the affair." While recuperating at his home, an adjuster from Raymond's insurance company paid Drake an impromptu visit. "He tried to get me to admit that Alex had committed suicide so they wouldn't have to pay the double indemnity," Drake said. "My shoulder was broken, my arm was in a sling, and I threw the guy out of my house." Drake never heard from Raymond's widow. About five years after the accident, Drake drove by the spot where they crashed, and he stopped to take a look. He noted that the tree the Corvette hit had grown taller, and that fragments of the car's plastic body remained embedded in it. He thought to himself that a great artist had died here, and he was glad that he had not died, too.
COMMENTARY FEATURES INTERVIEWS SKETCHBOOKS CLASSICS LINKS Photograph
provided courtesy of y Ray Burns. |
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The
two switched places, Raymond got out of the car to walk over to the driver's
side, while Drake stayed in the car and slid over to the passenger's seat,
and Raymond began driving down South Morningside Drive to Clapboard Road.
Once on Clapboard Road, Raymond began driving as if he were on Thompson
Speedway, his favorite race course in northern Connecticut.
Then I heard footsteps running toward me, and I heard a girl's voice saying,
'Don't hurt his leg, Daddy!' " That voice belonged to the daughter of
one of the emergency rescue workers who responded to the accident. Drake
then slipped back into unconsciousness.
